New Ulm weekly review. [volume] (New Ulm, Minn.) 1878-1892, 1887-01-26
THE RUTNS OF BAALBEC.
The Wonderful and Enaccountable Things Com
nected. With its Architecture.

Il Z = :
The following letter from Damascus
is from the pen, Of Hon. D. N. Richard
son. editor OF the Davenport, Iowa,
Democrat:
Baalbec! We had read OF it so many
times, yet knew 1t not. You may do
it a hundred times, and yet be igno-
rant. | can tell you nothing OF it, only
this-that over twenty acres-perhaps
more, are such old temple walls
and such gigantic columns, capitals,
cornlces, as can nowhere else be seen
in Asian lands. It has no satisfactory
history-as to who built here first in
this gigantic way; but that the Ro-
mans wrought here last before the
Arab came. is plain to see. How far
he got along, whether the vast work
was ever completed, no one will ever
know. Strewn is the ground with
columns inches in diameter, aud
nearly eventy-six-feet high ;strewn is
the ground with carven capital and
niched and boldest cornice work the
laborof q giant race; strewn is the earth
with debris from these lofty walls and
loftier roofs now here no more-a
mighty time-defying ruin. You come
INTO 1t as one struck dumb. The lofty
walls surround you. The PROSTATE col
umns lie about just where the earth
quake pitched them. OF those fifty
SIX IN place, some stand, some lean,
some tip against the wall, just as they
found themselves when the heavine
earth stood still again. You go and
measure stones. Immense-but take
s. sample piece-the one that
lies there in the quarry Just
beyond the town. There are
several in the buildings just about as
large, but you can't see the whole OF
them, but fthis one youcan. Itlooks
llks a cotton box car; but a box car
alongside this huge monolith would
look about as large as a Saratoga
trunk. You pace its length. It is like
starting down town. You look up. 1t is
like the blank wall Of a house; you cam
really understand the thing-you try
to lift one end, but don't succeed at
all, so take it's measure-take it from
the records. Thelength is seventy one
feet. Get up and pace that off. It's
breadth is fourteen feet, it's width
thirteen. Multiply these and see how
many cubic feet it has; then weigh it
some l,5OO tons-stone enough to
freight a hundred largest cars; and vet
they were going to carry this off bodi-
ly to the temple and lift it away up
somewhere in the wall.
Couldn't do 1t? NONSENSE In the
wall we have just been looking at there
are three smaller ones-64, 63 IL and
~ feet long, and thirteen feet the 9TH
er way; the width you cannotsee. But
these were carried there and lifted up
where they lie. You needn't think
that any one shouldered them and
took them there that way; nor need
you think because our puny race cam
do such things now without the aid of
steam or water force, that the Baal-
bee builders couldn't. They did. The
Egyptians did such thing, so did the
Romans, but in no modern buildings
do we find such feats of builders skill.
They claim for Egyptian stone NOV
ers that they took single piece
from Sien to Siais that weighed six
thousand tons-but the stone isn't
there to prove it-only the fragments
after Cambycis broke it up were figured
on. Men do some great things in this
age OF ours, but see their helps. Try
them without their steam and hy-
draulic powers. The heather was
ahead, and keeps ahead in feats of
crude human strength.
How came that UP there in Baalbec
vale, penned in by mountains, shut
out from the world-on the high road
to nowhere, came these men to build
such a gigantic structure. Place ofwor-
ship, no doubt-the sun and Jupiter
were worshipped there in time of Ro-
man strength; before them Greek, per-
haps; Phanician may be; the history
IS too meagre; no one knows; Rome
had no such temple scheme neither
Athens-yet away out there beyond
the sea some forty miles, and at a
point OF no great place or city-noth-
ing OF renown SO far as men know now,
this great amount of work was done.
A little village struggles here, living
largely from the revenues the temple
ruin brings; and built upon an ancient
graveyard in which the people delve
to put bones OF buried ones, and gath
er rings and trinkets from the rotted
flesh and bones of men and women,
maldens fair who were not stript of
their rings and angles. Little did they
think, those people of these violated
graves, that men would come and rob
their tombs in which they were to rest,
they said, until the judgment day.
And what think you, my reader? How
many centuries will pass before your
grave, those of your dear ones-wilI be
shoveled DER by other Christian ghouls.
like these this is a most part Chris
tian town-to pick up little souvenirs,
your wedding rings, and such like things
that you have buried with your dear
ones dead. There is only one escape,
for men are much alike and
have no reverence for the some